Audience Participation Time

It was a toss up between posting here or at On The Nightstand, but eventually I decided that it might just be best to crosspost it to both blogs (and be sure to untick the journalpress plugin for my livejournal and dreamwidth accounts on one, to avoid even more double-posting) as there are two different audiences, but both might be helpful.

Although not as big as some other bloggers’ piles, I do have a wee bit of a “to read” pile building up. I would take a photo of said pile, except I cannot find my camera.¹ So you are going to have to make do with just an ordinary list. So: which one should I read next?

• Dracula – Bram Stoker
• Children of the Night: Classic Vampire Stories – David Stuart Davies (editor)
• The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
• Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
• Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
• The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings – Edgar Allan Poe

And now that I have done that, onto the second part of this post: book recommendations! I am looking for books² that fit into one of the following categories (preferably YA, if fiction):

• Fairies, of the non-urban kind. And not the little kind of fairies either. Seelie/Unseelie courts and the like.
• Set in Victorian England, and with a focus on the upperclasses. MC being a female in her late teens/early twenties would be marvellous.
• Anything that would fit in with the general gist of what I have listed above. Other classics like them.

So yeah. Suggest away. This is what I call “fun research”, which I do while letting ideas fester in my head and just reading and changing my reading list slightly, as I cannot simply jump onto yet another project. So I am letting this seed grow, and watering it with good books.

1. Isn’t that the way it always works? You clean your room then cannot find a thing? [↩]
2. No need to suggest A Great And Terrible Beauty and sequels, as so many did this afternoon on Twitter. I’ve read the first, did not like it, and so am in no hurry to read the sequels. Anything else is welcome though! [↩]

4 Comments »

1. Kathleen said on 6 July 2009 at 2:09 am

   A fairies suggestion: Wildewood Dancing by Juliet Marillier. It’s a fairytale for grown ups. She has some other wonderful books as well. The Sevenwater Trilogy for example. The first book of that trilogy is based upon the fairytale “The Seven Swans”. Definitely worth reading. She’s one of my favorite authors.

2. Manda said on 6 July 2009 at 6:08 pm

   Definitely read The Picture of Dorian Gray first

3. Krissy said on 14 July 2009 at 3:09 am

   Another vote for The Picture of Dorian Gray! I loved that book. Unfortunately, I can’t help much on the other recommendations front.

4. Lara said on 25 July 2009 at 12:23 am

   Oooh, Bram Stoker’s Dracula gets my vote.

   If you haven’t read Neil Gaiman’s Stardust, that’s a good cross-age-audience Faerie tale.

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